N O R T H C O A S T T IM E S E A G L E , JAN/FEBRUARY 2004
PAGE
L E IT H K A H L
I do not think it likely that Bush will occupy the White
House for a second term, not because the American “people"
have any means to prevent him from doing so, but because
the nation’s wealthy elite are going to choose a new executive
to guard their wealth. In 2000, Bush's campaign team enjoyed
a fairly wide base of support among the rulers of American
business and military. Most of that support has now become
disappointed in him.
To wit, the leaders of Wall Street are nostalgic about
the prosperity they enjoyed through the Clinton years, and the
computer and information sector barons feel likewise. Most
military leaders are becoming frustrated with Bush's obvious
military incompetence and his misappraisal of the disaster in
the Middle East he has ordered them to administrate. America's
leading importers and exporters are frustrated with the costs
imposed by his ineffective “security” measures. Even the oil
barons are frustrated that no oil has materialized for them out
of Iraq. (Those pipelines just seem to keep blowing up.)
What the American ruling class wants now is a
neo-liberal Democrat to rebuild their international investment
prospects and consolidate the gains that they made through
Bush's expansionist adventure. They want someone like a
Harry Truman or an LBJ. The only major support Bush has left
within the ruling class is among weapons and defense manufact
urers and contractors like Haliburton. For these reasons and not
because of anything the “great American public" may think about
Bush one way or another, I believe that a Democrat will occupy
the White House in January 2005.
Many Americans who vote for this Democrat will do so
in the hopes the Democrat will get us out of Iraq and improve
our health care. Unfortunately, none of the Democratic candi
dates are any more likely to do either of those things than
G.W. Bush is. Whoever occupies the White House in the next
term will continue to cut our social services and build up the
occupation force in Iraq unless we as a people engage in
activities (far beyond merely voting) to prevent it from being
profitable for them to do so.
TERESA B A R N E S
I'd like to think Bush wouldn’t be elected this year. I was
afraid he would be after 9/11 when he had those high ratings.
I have started to disregard polls and everything except
what I hear or see. I have yet to meet someone who says they
are completely happy with what Bush is doing. Most people I talk
to seem interested in the idea of cooperation and peace.
If Bush does get elected (or re-elected), I will think a lot
of people are negative and apocalyptic. I think that is a cop-out
— it frees people up from having to do something right now
about the way things are.
E L IZ A B E T H M E N E T R E Y
I wish to be optimistic. I hope that the Democratic Party
will rise to the occasion and get behind the strongest candidate.
Defeating Bush should be the highest priority. However, the cool
detached part of my brain fears that he will indeed be re-elected
and that is truly frightening to contemplate.
If the Democrats can't unite and if the American people
continue to be misled, ill-informed and manipulated through the
corporate owned media and Bush is re-elected, we can look
forward to:
The further erosion of our civil rights and freedom.
The continued rape of our environment.
The deterioration of the social systems that support
those who need support the most — children, the elderly, the
sick and the poor.
Growing ranks of those who live in poverty.
More children without any health insurance.
Corporate controlled media that only reports what
corporations want us to hear.
A government that supports corporations' bottom-line
over the health and safety of American citizens.
What is most chilling to me is the current administration
seems oblivious to bankrupting the next generation. Where is
the long-term thinking? Where is real leadership? I maintain
hope, because I must. I have a young child and I want a better
world for her. It is critical not to give up in these darkening days.
S A R A H S E IL E R
I have a feeling Mr. Bush will be re-elected. I do not like
this, and even though an alternative outcome is possible and
that surprises still exist, underneath any other winning candidate
the suspicion of a shape-shifter or hired man will be an obvious
reality most will deny.
Looking back at the last election, it is easy to see the
amount of power the Bush family has, and how the government
is a big Shop & Go —with money you can buy yourself anything.
Or you are friends with the security and they let you walk right
on through with what you really didn’t earn. A private business
decision to hire a new President, that is how the last election
worked. It seems to me that as long as Bush is interested in
something, it will be his.
So the question is, how will this effect us in the 21st
century?
TIM LANE
All I need do is take one person to then personalize the
sum of thoughts, motives and actions he has displayed, and
conjecture from that what will happen.
Suppose this person ignores the necessity of a clean
and preserved environment: what if he never acknowledged the
necessity of the care of his own body? What if he cut off his
fingers and gorged himself on concentrated poisons?
What if this person did not think of peace, especially
with foreign persons and places? Maybe he would never begin
to understand or accept (or even care) about their own purpose,
concerned only that by removing them he makes more room for
his power and that much less he had no control over.
He does not take time to consider how all parts of his
body make up the integrated whole because he is blind to the
equality of segmented parts of the human species and that
without equality and integration, alienated or separated parts will
shrivel up and most likely die off.
This person sees destruction as the remedy of what in
his illusory mind is a problem or a barrier between him and more
personal wealth or power. He does not particularly care about
the horrible effects of violence, only the rewards he thinks it will
bring him.
I could give more examples, but my purpose is to try
and illustrate that the mentality of personal avarice can be
simplified and that it represents the part of our collective ego
that seems to always want to take over everything: the inability
to accept symbiosis in order to sustain the whole, and much
more demented, fear-born pathologies.
President Bush can only get away with so much before
degeneration leads to demise. I don't think this necessarily bad.
I feel it is healthier to accept and forgive his ignorance.However,
I am disappointed he has chosen to use no creativity anywhere,
which is leading to a very foolish, deceitful and predictable path
of self-aggrandizement at the expense of everybody else.
CA RO LYN AD AM S
I guess I hope so much that Bush won’t be re-elected
that I can’t get my mind around him being in the White House
again.
If he will be in the White House for a second term it will
be disaster. He has done so much harm to this country.
YES TO PEACE
^acf)’nRocK
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A NEUTER H U M A N E A S S O C IA TIO N
Momentum is building across the world for the Global
Day of Action Against War & Occupation on March 20, the one
year anniversary of the U S. bombing and invasion of Iraq.
On that day millions around the world will take to the
streets to say “yes" to peace and “no' to preemptive war and
occupation. Joining with growing numbers of military families
and soldiers, we will call for an end to occupation of Iraq and
Bush's militaristic foreign policies. March 20 will be the first
time the world's “other superpower," as The New York Times
described us, will take center stage since February 5, 2003,
when more than 10 million people across the globe expressed
their opposition to Bush's looming war with Iraq
The U S protests will also take on the war at home. We
will express the growing opposition to the so-called “Patriot" Act,
authorizing political arrests, indefinite detention, domestic spying
and religious and racial profiling We will call for an end to the
mass detentions and deportation of innocent immigrants in the
name of fighting terrorism We will say “no" to massive military
spending amidst vast cuts in vital domestic social and economic
programs.
'■VIETNAM VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR WEBSITE
S U S A N A G L A D W IN
I thought the powers that be would turn their backs on
President Bush, vilify him and win the love of the world back
again, and carry on the usual carving up of the world.
Since there are enough computerized voting machines
that can be programmed to elect Republicans, I think Bush can
be re-elected. I hope after November they (someone!) compares
which machines elected which party.
The Bushies are doing less carving up and more rape,
pillage and grab. Since war is their game (and dollars), everyone
hating us is money in the bank for them.
I feel this culture is like a drunk on a bender and is going
to crash. Maybe the sooner the better, but it won't be pretty.
Capitalism leads to greed and it is ruling the world, so I
think it does need to crash.
sean mcmullin
Don’t get me wrong, I would rather have a warm, fuzzy,
sensitive to the world’s pain liberal Democrat in the White House
than a cock-strutting cowboy-jock of a conservative Republican
because that talking head would be ever more slightly closer to
my needs than the other.
But — and this is a big, no-way-that-would-ever-fit-in-
a-movie theater seat But — I feel that we have more pressing
problems that the outcome of the November election, and that
for the most part none of the candidates are going to approach
these problems sincerely because they are the wealthy ruling
class.
True change would be a threat to them. True change
would bring them back to our level. True change would confront
the presence of the USA as a fat imperialistic war-mongering
monster that is attempting to pacify the world as it has already
done to the people of this country.
Do we really think that another President is going to
derail all of this? Let’s not fool ourselves.
K A R E N M E L L IN
I think Bush will seize the Presidency once more, just as
he did the last time. I believe he will create an artificial event as
the election draws close, a catastrophic emergency of some sort
that is already probably being planned.
What I always noticed about the right-wing during the
Vietnam War is that they didn’t have much imagination and
reverted to tactics used by brownshirts to curtail opposition —
and I expect that they will continue.
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